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Soviet Log 60
Blimpfiltration We picked things up at the beginning of block four after a furious day of offtime after defeating Theresa Beria. Vasily had completed his forgery/disguise/military intelligence prep-work so it was time for he and Katya to contact the five key lieutenants who controlled friendly Red Army detachments. We knew the best place to start was the military bar where Kat had made contact with Obelov previously. It was a simple matter to steal a bike, pass through the security gates, and arrive at the bar. Luck was with us, all of the lieutenants were seated at a table with Obelov. We sat down where Vasily covertly revealed his identity. They were all shocked but excited to speak more with us so, at Katya's urging, we all moved to a nearby safehouse. Once there, Katya also revealed her identity and we sat down to plan the liberation of Moscow. After some debate we arrived at a plan where the Red Army forces would covertly (casual but not too casual) place themselves near key NKVD detachments. Then, they would all strike at a designated time. We decided that 12:18 AM was the right time since it gave the army enough time to organize, gave us enough time to finish our preparations, and also was a good time to attack since they wouldn't be expecting it 18 mins after the block had started - who would do that?! With the plan in motion, Katya and Vasily returned to our hideout where Katya then spent a 'sultan' block with Giacomo like it was the 'day before the end of the world'. The next morning, Mei was still sleeping off her Deprivation, so the others busied themselves with various tasks; Roquette worked on an idea of Eva's: to expand the effect of the Anti-Noise Anti-Virus to the city's air-raid siren system. Unfortunately she was on able to prototype a version that would affect a single siren, not the entire system. :( Meanwhile Kat penetrated Moscow's inner ring in her courier disguise on a stolen motorcycle and scouted out the Radio Moscow broadcast facility, determining that the best course of action would be to implant the Anti-Noise Transmitter directly on the exterior antennae, (which took Roc yet another Party Block to reconfigure it). Eva meanwhile scouted the heavens for the incoming Nazi Air-Dreadnought. Sure enough, half way through Block One it loomed into view, surrounded by a squadron of super nasty looking Red-Barron Luftwaffe Jets. As it moved into a tight circular orbit around the Kremlin, in dropped off one of its Sections, which we later saw was a deployable base that had landed smack in the middle of Red Square, right between the Cathedral of St. Basil and the new Nazi Monument. Also, the Dreadnought apparently had a level 14+ Signal Jamming Array, as we determined by having all of our signals jammed for at least 14 levels. Since this was going to put a pretty serious crimp in our radio broadcast based plan, our next target became immediately clear: Deal with the Dreadnought! Eva continued to observe the movements of the Fighters and put her Vehicle Engineering prowess to good use analyzing the Dreadnought. It was a marvel of engineering, with a wide array of weapons both giant and normal sized, as well as two Hanger Sections for the jets, (VTOL?) an entire Section devoted to Communications, a Combined Section double Engine Room and a wide variety of built-in redundancies. We debated a number of approaches to infiltrate it, but with the deadline looming at 12:18 the next morning there was no time to build a legend for the Hot Nazi Stewardesses, and any plan that involved flying directly into its level 12 Sensors and bristling weapons array seemed doomed to certain failure. As it turned out however, Eva was also able to put a rough time table to the rotation of the fighter escorts, which traded off for fresh planes via the Hanger Doors roughly every 2-hours. This looked like a promising potential means of egress to the vessel! In the meantime though, we still had to plant the Anti-Noise Transmitter at the radio station. After waking Mei up, (still somewhat sleep-deprived), we geared up into our still hopefully 'clean' NKVD Officer disguises and headed for the inner ring of the city, (bringing only Cyta from the NPC Squad, for some reason Morphed into Lisolette disguised as an NKVD Officer?). Despite a few tense moments at the checkpoint, (on high alert for some odd reason? :) ), another of Eva's patented Natural 20 Beguile Rolls soon had us on our way again. The stop at the radio station went surprisingly smoothly, so we slunk away and kept a low profile for a while, while surreptitiously keeping an eye on the circling fighters overhead. We had decided along the way that the best course of action was going to be an old stand-by: the Obfuscated-Portal-Stealth entry through the hanger doors using the jets as a distraction / cover, followed up with the standard "Sneak until you get Caught" gambit. We also debated where we needed to go once we got aboard. The bridge would be a prime target if we wanted to seize control of the vessel and do the obvious: crash it into the partially complete Nazi Monument! Eva worried there might be multiple Bridges though, (despite Kat's Nazi Lore telling her that they would have "One Master Bridge"). Eva suggested we should try and take the Engine Room, as there would likely be back-up controls there that could potentially supersede those on the Bridge, (or at the very least we could just generally fuck shit up pretty bad in there). However, this still left the Paired Signal Jammers up in the Communications Section - a potentially dangerous diversion? Things got interesting a little after half way through the Block, when the Jets cycled and we had to make a quick decision whether to pull the trigger on the Blimpfitration Mission or not. Projections put the next changing of the guard at 12:10 am, which would of course only leave an 8 minute window to scuttle the ship, (if the Nazis were on time, and they had actually been surprisingly lax as far as punctuality on the shift changes so far). It was a bit of a crap shoot, but in the end we decided to wait, (or at least argued about it long enough that we missed our opportunity). We were primed and ready the next time when the hanger doors started to open however, fully powered up and as stealthy as we could possibly manage, (thanks Cyta!). Mei cast flight on everyone and opened up a Portal just outside, (and around the corner from), the Hanger Door. Stealth Checks were made, we held our breaths, but, unbelievably we did not appear to be detected as we scuttled in and across the ceiling of the large Hanger Bay. We hung like, (invisible), bats in a dark corner for a moment to observe the situation: a number of pilots and support workers doing their pilot and support worker thing, and 2 Armed Guards in Nazi Exo-Suits, one at each of the 2 doorways, (which had level 12 Surveillance systems over them. The doorways, not the guards. Well they were over the guards too, but only because the guards were standing at the doors...). Mei used her Menial Magic to produce a flickering light to distract the guard in clear contravention of the rule that menial magic can never do anything useful, then Roc and Eva combined their level 9 Surveillance Systems Skills, (and Eva's System Nanites), to momentarily confuse the sensors and we slipped through when no one was looking. Beyond was another hallway, with some big bulkhead doors at the end, and a couple of smaller ones on the way. The 2 smaller doors were labelled incomprehensibly, (even to German readers); one was open, the other was locked, so of course we investigated them both. After Kat needed 2 tries, (with a Benny on each of them!), to pick the Lock, we found that the locked one had some useful loot, including 4 level 4 multi-tools, (one of which we used to loop the video of the security system at the end of the hall with). The unlocked one proved to be some kind of change room, so in a scene strangely reminiscent of the video game "Hitman" we disguised our selves as technicians, (or at least Cyta disguised us magically, we didn't actually put on the German outfits). Confident in our new disguises, we boldly strode down the corridor and opened up the bulkhead to the Engine Room. It was filled with a number of technicians, as well as more guards and some seriously impressive power plants. The Tech appeared to be similar to, but years ahead of, what we had seen the Americans use on the Joltin' Josie, but we didn't have time to debate who was more likely to have stolen it from whom, as by now there were only 8 minutes left until the deadline for the rebellion. As the head engineer approached to engage us, we plowed ahead on pure bravado and charm, explaining we were the relief crew here to track down the cause of the strange power fluctuations that were being reported across the ship. Some zippers were lowered on some insubstantial coveralls and yet another round of blistering Beguiles occurred, and the poor engineer was soon befuddled and bewitched. As Kat menialed up some more pick-pocket lighting flickers and Mei batted her eyelashes, Eva wandered off to ogle the equipment and Roc proceeded with her plan to disable the Signal Jammer remotely from the Engine Room. Finding the main power relay to the rest of the ship, Roc was able to, (under guise of doing a diagnostic check), separate out the supply to the Communications Section, then disable its safety features and bypass the ship's main power through it, blowing out its entire power grid and hopefully damaging all of the equipment contained within beyond repair in anything other than 4-Hour Blocks. There was of course, a huge shower of sparks and a loud popping noise produced, attracting the attention of everybody in the room. Roc started screaming that the ship had been sabotaged, and that there was a Main Power Cascade Overload, and that everybody needed to evacuate immediately! For some reason, the GM elected to call it there... Rewards 11 Points you can't spend until combat is over Party Benny! Everyone gets 1 Benny for their successful mission impossible infiltration (not a carryover Benny Roq!) Roq 4 Random Points and 1 Benny Kat 1 Benny Category:Soviet